'Oh, Dulcie, let me kiss you--I can't kiss your Florian just now!' exclaimed the impulsive Finella, embracing her companion, whose eyes, like her own, were brimming with tears of joy and sympathy. Hammersley had received a wound of which no details were given; and that circumstance, by its vaguity, filled the heart of Finella with the keenest anxiety. Oh, if he should die believing what he did of her, when she had been and was still so true and loyal to him! The intelligence rather stunned her; and for some minutes she remained paralyzed with dismay. She was powerless, with all her wealth, to succour in any way her suffering lover, and no resolution could shape itself in her mind. He might be dying, or already dead, for the fight had taken place some days ago--dying amid suffering and misery, while she remained idly, lazily, and in comfort amid the luxuries of Craigengowan. Even Dulcie failed to console her; and declining to appear at the breakfast-table, she took refuge in her own room, with the usual feminine plea of a headache. 'Florian, poor dear Florian! so good, so brave, so fearless!' said Dulcie to herself aloud; 'how glad I am he has achieved this, for _her_ sake!' How sweet and soft grew her voice as she uttered the name of the lost, the absent one, while an hysterical lump was rising in her throat, and Shafto, who had seen the paper and knew the source of this emotion, looked grimly in her face, with twitching lips and knitted brows. 'I have no chance,' thought he, 'with these two girls--either Dulcie the poor or Finella the rich. Yet why should I not contrive to bend _both_ to my purpose?' was his evil afterthought. 'Well,' said he aloud; 'you have seen the news, of course?' 'Yes, Shafto,' replied Dulcie in a low voice, while her tears fell fast. 'So--he is not killed yet!' She regarded him with bitter reproach. 'Don't cry, Dulcie!' said Shafto, with a little emotion of shame, 'or you will make me feel like a brute now.' 'I always thought you must have felt like one long ago,' retorted the girl, as she swept disdainfully past him. As Lord and Lady Fettercairn had no desire to bring the name of Captain Hammersley on the _tapis_, no reference whatever to the affair of Ginghilovo, or even to the Zulu War, was made in the presence of Finella. Even if the latter had not been engaged, as she still could not help deeming herself, to Hammersley, and had she not a decided, repugnance to Shafto, her pride and her whole soul must have revolted against a _mariage de convenance_. She had formed, girl-like, her own conceptions of an ideal man, and beyond all whom she met, in London or elsewhere, Vivian Hammersley was her 'Prince Charming;' and in a day or two her mind was partially set at rest when she read a description of his wound, a flesh one, inflicted by an assegai, and which was then healing fast, but, as she knew, only to enable him to face fresh perils.